No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
My credit scores are in the mid 700's and I have:
National City : 15,500.00
Ameriprise : 10,000.00
Partners CU : 10,000.00
Discover More : 9,800.00
These are pretty recent, only the National City has had a CLI. The rest all started where they are.
OK.
3 cards at $25000 credit limit, one card has $20000 CL, 7 cards have 5 figures CL. Average CL is $15100. Store cards are not included in calculations.
The oldest account is 3 y.o.
AAoA is 1 year.
TU 760, EQ 723, EXP (Alliant 787)
HHI a little more than $100k
No baddies
I have never paid a penny of financial charges.
@Anonymous wrote:
I started out with a 500.00 CL's as a college student back in the early 90's, and the limits have increased over the years. From my experiences, it takes time to get the high limits. I Paid all of my bills on time, used credit responsibly, etc, and saw my limits steadily rise over the years. I found that after I bought my house in 2000, the banks started increasing me to the crazy 25-50K limits.
My experience is similar, though even when my wife and I rented before getting our condo in 2002 the limits on all our credit cards already were close to $20K, I don't recall exactly. I do have specific memory of asking the loan officer whether a total balance on credit cards of about $2K would make any difference in the mortgage interest rate and being told that would not affect my rate (we were deciding whether to use a little of our savings to zero-out all CC balances, which we could easily have done if it made any difference).
My first card was an AMEX which I got shortly after getting my undergraduate degree in 1982 (back then it was utterly unheard of for a full-time student to have a credit card unless it was an additional card on a parental account). My other cards I got various times, I don't recall exactly but all my cards I've had for at least 15 years. I have never requested any credit line increases, the limits reached their current levels gradually over the years from automatic increases. At present my Chase and Citi cards are between $20K and $30K, my AMEX Gold Card has no prespecified limit, and my smallest limit is a little over $10K on my Discover card. I believe the limit on my wife's Citit card is between $15K and $20K.
Edited to add: none of the credit card companies knows our current household income because the only time any of them ever asked me for that information was at the time of applying over 15 years ago. The only lender ever to have verified my income with my employers has been for the mortgage (and a later refi when rates dropped), I would know because my employers will not do verifications without my permission. In my experience car lenders always approved based on credit history and what I told them, none ever asked permision to verify. One landlord twenty-some years ago did an informal verification of employment in a brief phone call to my boss (I was sitting there while she made the call, it was something like "Hi, this is Foobar Apartments, Matt H. is sitting here next to me, he says you're his boss..."). Other landlords haven't done even that much verification.
I have cards with Amex, BOA, Chase, Citi, Discover, HSBC, US Bank and PenFed.
I have no slightest idea why my CLI requests were approved.
@Anonymous wrote:
Wmarat, would you mind telling me what cards do you have and how did you get those limits? did you get them initially or got CLI's?
I have
Discover Miles - 25K CL - 17K used at 0%
Chase Disney - 39K CL - 25K used at 0% - balance transfer capped at $75
Chase Amazon - 16.5K CL - use occationally when rewards are right
BOA Mastercard - 30K CL - 29K used at 0% - balance transfer capped at $75
Citi forward - 7.3K - New - but will charge full amount - 0% for 6mths
A bunch of smaller stuff - about 12 more cards
Wife has
Citi forward - 7K - New - but will charge full amount - 0% for 6mths
Discover 18.6K - our default CC when no other card makes sense
BOA Visa - 10K - was 0% - now PIF
A bumch of smaller stuff - about 10 more cards
I have scientific idea how we qualify for so much when others get so little - but here is some background and suggestions.
Most of the time we were building that portfolio we had one income - mine. Income is decent and improved to good - but not setting the world on fire or anything. My wife was bad with credit and we paid a bunch of interest early on - a bunch - but we we never late for a payment ever. A couple years ago I got smart on this stuff and now I am killing the CC companies - but they probably do see us a a very profitable/low risk customer - although they are going to catch up eventually. I am now in my second cycle of max out BT's at 0% and PIF before I pay any interest.
Apply for credit seperate from spouse. Alot of CC companies ask for household income - so you can get 2 seperate cards from the same company with the same income - essentially doubling you household income by virtue of two seperate applications.
Look for 0% balance transfers with 0 fees or capped fees (getting harder and harder to get). If you get a BT check - call and ask to cap fee. If they do - move all you CLs with that company onto that account and max it out. PIF before its due obviously.
Look for 0% apr teasers and take full advantage by charging everything. Look for sign-up bonuses. My Chase protfolio is so huge cause I kept applying for 0% aprs when one would roll-off - then I would combine balances with other chase cards. BOA is the same thing. App for something everytime your score gets 720+. Get a $100 sign-up, a 0% apr, a few K extra in CL, another card to ask for a CLI, or another card to combine the CL when you get a capped BT offer, and another set of reward options. Citi forward has some nice terms right now - 6mth 0% apr - 11000 points sign-up, 5% at resturants.
Never be late - ever.
Pay everything with a CC. Actively look for ways to build up your balances if you can get the cash right back.
Actively look to make money from this stuff. Open up bank accounts for bonuses. Find the highest interest rates you can, be a rate chaser. If you work somewhere that you can easily manipulate/split your direct deposit - that is a very powerful tool.